Educating Jack
Teacher Series · Book VI
Jack Sheffield

Bantam Press (Transworld UK)
26 January 2012 / ISBN: 9780593065693
General Fiction / 1982-83 / Yorkshire, England
Amazon US - UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

Here is the sixth year of headmaster Jack Sheffield's reminiscences of his years at a rural Yorkshire primary school. He is enjoying his first year of marriage to fellow headteacher Beth and looks on as other couples get together for better or worse. Vera and Ruby becomes unlikely best friends and both receive good news, the first rumblings of the national curriculum are felt, Petula organizes a book club and Jack has news of his own.

These probably ought to be available on prescription. Wallowing in nostalgia is perhaps not the most positive way to spend time but maybe politicians should be made to read this wistful recollection of a more innocent time. Anybody over a certain age will be smiling in remembrance of breakfast TV, the 20p and £1 coin, Arthur Scargill, Margaret Thatcher, and Fame legwarmers. You could see all this as educational too, social history looking at a particular time and place and in many ways spot on. There is much to smile, laugh or even cry over as people receive both good and bad news, another class leaves for the secondary school and what we know as the modern world creeps in all over the place. If you miss Heatbeat, or even if you have never heard of it and simply enjoy life-affirming books (don't we all?) then this will more than fit the bill. Do we really have to wait another year for another one·